Galápagos Islands: a Supposedly extinct giant tortoise lives

The subspecies Chelonoidis phantasticus of the Galápagos giant tortoise kept researchers believed to be extinct, a living specimen has been discovered. As the Ecuadorian Minister of the environment, Marcelo Mata announced via Twitter that had been spotted the adult females on the island of Fernandina. There, Mata also presented three pictures, the turtle alone and with those people to show that you should have in the context of a U.S. environmental organization Galapagos Conservancy organized the Expedition discovered.

Chelonoidis phantasticus was for more than a century to be extinct. The species is documented only on the uninhabited island of Fernandina. Isolated in the Pacific ocean, the nearby Galapagos Islands, a Unesco world heritage site since 1979, to accommodate the world’s largest number of endemic species – i.e. species that occur only there. The giant turtles have a special role to play, they were even name-giving for the Islands about 1,000 kilometers off the coast of Ecuador. Based on the saddle-like tanks of some of the specimens they called the archipelago, the “Galapagos”, which in Spanish means “bead saddle”. Of the 15 there once native giant species of turtle were seen last, before the latest discovery, five as extinct, including Chelonoidis nigra abigdonii from the island of Pinta.

Last representative of the turtle was here, Lonesome George, who died in 2012 in a research station on the island of Santa Cruz. In contrast, the subspecies Chelonoidis nigra hoodensis has been recovering since a few years back. This is due to the highly pairing willing turtle Diego, it was moved in 1976 from a Zoo in San Diego to the Galapagos Islands. In 2010, researchers found that Diego was the father of nearly 40 percent from a breeding program in the Wilderness dismissed turtles.

in Front of an estimated two to three million years ago, the first giant managed to turtles from the South American mainland to the Galápagos Islands and home were there. Thus, Chelonoidis phantasticus home-stays, and not yet extinct, would have to plant the sighted copy now only once. Another Survivor on the island would be at least necessary: a male of the same subspecies.